Kashmir: peace of the graveyard (Part I)

Human rights abuses in the Jammu and Kashmir state are an ongoing topic. The mass killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and sexual abuse to political repression. Some human rights groups say more than 100,000 people have died since 1989 while the official forms from Indian sources state the estimates of number of civilians killed due to the pro-freedom movement are above 50,000 civilians allegedly mostly killed by Indian Armed Forces. India accuses the Pakistan Army for abusing human rights in Jammu and Kashmir by violating the ceasefire and continuing to kill Kashmiri civilians, a claim which is wholly rejected by Pakistan who blames Indian army for the violation of Line of control.

In December 2009 mass graves were found in North Kashmir containing 2,900 unmarked bodies. International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice, a human rights group, called for an independent probe into the unmarked mass graves in Kashmir and immediate halt to committing such crimes. The probe was demanded at a news conference in Srinagar called to release the report which claimed that 2,700 ‘unknown, unmarked, and mass graves,’ containing at least 2,900 bodies, in 55 villages in three districts Bandipora, Baramulla, and Kupwara have been probed. It claimed 87.9 percent of the cadavers in the graves were unnamed. In November 2017, the state-run human rights commission had ordered the government in Kashmir to investigate at least 2,080 unmarked mass graves discovered in border areas of the restive region. The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, a human rights group in Kashmir, told the commission there were 3,844 unmarked graves – 2,717 in Poonch and 1,127 in Rajouri, twin districts.

I would like to take your attention towards two incidents in the last two decades.

First incident was the attack on Indian Parliament. On 13 December 2001, five terrorists infiltrated the Parliament House in a car. While both the Upper and Lower houses of the Parliament had been adjourned 40 minutes prior to the incident, many members of parliament and government officials were believed to have still been in the building at the time of the attack. More than 100 people, including major political leaders were inside the parliament building at the time. The gunmen breached the security deployed around the parliamentary complex. It was reported that the terrorists carried AK47 rifles, grenade launchers, pistols and grenades. The total figure of deaths was 14 and at least 22 people were injured in the attack; however the ministers and MPs escaped unhurt.

From the very outset there was nothing primal or simple about Mohammad Afzal’s case. Amnesty International had questioned his sentence saying that he did not receive adequate legal representation and that his execution was carried out in secrecy

For months before the attack on parliament, both the government and the constabulary had been saying that parliament could be attacked. On December 12 2001, the then prime minister, AB Vajpayee, warned of an impending attack. It happened on December 13. Given that there was an improved security, how did a car bomb packed with explosives enter the parliament complex?

Mohammad Afzal Guru was convicted for his role in the attack. He did not claim complete innocence. It was the nature of his involvement that was being contested. For instance, was he coerced, tortured and blackmailed into playing even the peripheral part he played? In a flagrant violation of his constitutional rights, from the time he was arrested and right through the crucial phase of the trial when the real work of building up a case is done, Afzal did not have a lawyer.

After his arrest, Mohammad Afzal Guru made a confessional statement which bore his signature, registered by the DCP, special cell. Nevertheless, after seven months, Guru disowned the confession and the Supreme Court did not accept the earlier confession as evidence against him. On 18 December 2002, relying on the circumstantial evidence, the special court awarded capital punishment to Guru.

From the very outset there was nothing primal or simple about Mohammad Afzal’s case. Amnesty International had questioned his sentence saying that he did not receive adequate legal representation and that his execution was carried out in secrecy.

Five years afterwards, a group of lawyers, academics, journalists and writers had published a reader December 13th: The Strange Case of the Parliament Attack, published by Penguin India. The essays in the Penguin book raise questions about how Afzal, who never received proper legal representation, can be sentenced to death without having had an opportunity to be heard, without a fair trial. They put forward questions about fabricated arrest memos, falsified seizure and recovery memos, procedural flaws, vital evidence that has been tampered with, false telephone records, false testimonies, material contradictions in the testimonies of police and prosecution witnesses, and the outright lies that were presented in court and published in newspapers. They indicate how there is hardly a single piece of evidence that stands up to scrutiny.

Within days of the onslaught, the Special Cell of the Delhi police said it was a meticulously planned joint operation of Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. They stated the attack was led by a man called Mohammad who was also involved in the hijacking of flight IC-814 in 1998.

The entire attack was recorded live on CCTV. Two Congress party MPs demanded in parliament that the CCTV recording be shown to the members. They stated that there was confusion about the details of the event. Why was the CCTV recording not produced by the prosecution as evidence in the tribulation? Why it was not released for public viewing? Why was parliament adjourned after some of these questions were put forward?

A few days after December 13, the government declared that it had irrefutable evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the attack, and announced a massive mobilisation of almost half a million soldiers to the Indo-Pakistan border.How much did this military standoff, which survived for nearly a year, cost? How many soldiers perished in the process? How many soldiers and civilians died because of mishandled landmines, and how many peasants lost their places and land because trucks and tanks were rolling through their villages.